St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1887-06-04

| was held to RAISE money 10 Dullu nome
at Richmond for crippled Confederate
soldiers, the meeting presided over by a
man who lost an arm and leg in fight
! ing on the Northern side, and the leg not
| lost so hurt that it does not amount to
much The Cotton Exhibition. held not
long ago at Atlanta, was attended by
tens of thousands of Northern people,
and by General Sherman, who was greeted
with kindness, as though they had never
seen him before. At the New Or
leans Exhibition, held two years ago,
every Northern State was repre-
sented. A thousand-fold kindlier
feeling after the war than before the
war. No more use of gunpoWder IN this
| country, except for rifle practice, or
Fourth OF July pyrotechnics, or shot at
roebuck in the Adirondacks Brigadier
generals in the Southern Confederacy
making their fortunes as lawyers in the
Northern cities. Rivers of Georgia, Ala
bama and North Carolina turning mills
of New England capitalists. The old
lions of war-Fort Sumter, and Moultrie,
and Lafayette, and Pickens, and Hamil-
ton, sound asleep on their iron paws, and
instead of raising money to keep enemies
out of our New York harbor, raising
money for the Bartholdi statue on Bed
loe's island, figure of Liberty with up
lifted torch to light the way to
all who want to come in. Instead of
war antipathies, when you could not
cross the line between the contestants
without fighting your way with Heen
steel, or getting through by passes care
fully scrutinized at every step by bavo-
nets, you need only railroad ticket from
New York to Charleston or New Or
leans to 60 clear through, and there is
no use for any weapon sharper or
stronger than a steel pen. Since the
years of time began their roll, has there
ever been, in about two decades, such an
overmastering antithesis as between the
war time of complete bitterness and this
time of complete sympathy?
Contrast also the domestic life of those
times with the domestic life of these
times. Many of you were either leaving
home or far away from it, communicating
by uncertain letter. What morning
that was when you left home. Father and
mother crying, sisters crying, you smiling
outside but crying inside Everybody ner-
vous and excited Boys of the blue and
gray whether you started from the banks
of the Hudson, or the Savannah, or the
Androscoggin, don't you remember the
scenes at the front door, at the rail car
window, on the steamboat landing The
huZza could not drown out the sup
pressed sadness. Don't you remember
those charges to write home often, and
take good care of yourself, be good boys,
and the goodbye kiss which they
thought, and you thought, might be for
ever. Then the homesickness as you
paced the river bank on a star
light night on picket duty, and
the sly tears which you wiped off
when you heard a group at the camp
fire singing the plantation song about
the old folks at home. The dinner
of hard tack on Thanksgiving Day, and
the Christmas without any presents, and
the long nights in the hospital so differ
ent from the sickness when you were at
home with mother and sister at the bed
side, and the clock in the hall giving the
exact moment for the medicine; and that
forced march when your legs ached, and
your head ached, and your wounds ached,
and more than all your heart ached.
Inconsistencies which had in it a suffoca-
ton and pang worse than death. You
never got hardened as did the guardsman
in the Crimean war, who heartlessly
wrote home to his mother:
Il do not want to see any more crying |
letters come to the Crimea from you.
Those | have received put into my rifle |
after loading it, and have fired them at |
the Russians, because you appear to have
a strong dislike of them. If you have |
seen as many killed as have you would .
not have as many weak ideas as you now
have"
You never felt like that When a
soldiers knapsack was found after his
death in the American war there was gen.
orally careful package containing
Bible, few photographs and letters from
home On the other hand tens of thou
sands of homes waited for news. Parents
saying, Twenty thousand killed! |
wonder if our boy was among them
Painting dead away in postoffices and
stations. Both the ears of God
filed with the sobs and agonies of kin
lred waiting for news, or dropping
under the announcement of bad news
Speak, swamps Of the Chickahominy, and
midnight lagoons, and ire-rafts of the
and gunboats before Vicks-
ourg, and woods of Antietam, and tell to
Ill the mountains and valleys and rivers
ind lakes of North and South, ieremiads
If war times that have never been sylla-
)led.
Beside that domestic perturbation and
lCmesickness of those days put the
weet domesticity of to-day. The only
you now ever sit at is the one
,indled in stove or furnace or hearth
instead of half-ration of salt pork,
epast luxuriant because partaken of by
owing family circle and in secret conf
ence. o, now | see who those letters
we're for-the Letters you, the young
older, took so long in your tent to
write, and that you were so particular
o put in the mail without any one see
ng you lest you be leased by Xour COM
AIDES. God spared you to get Back, and
hough the old people have gone, you
ave home of your own construction,
nd you often contrast those awful alb
ences and filial and brotherly and low
rly heartbreaks with your present resi-
ence, which is the dearest place you
ill find this side of Heaven. The place
there your children were born is the I
lace where you want to die. To write
ne figures of 1862 1 set up four crystals {
of tears. To write the figures I
1887 stand up four members of your S
ousehold-fgures of rosy cheeks and